How stupid is this??

Obviously, you are not a happy person if you are an atheist and have to write about it on a cardboard boxstuck in the back of your car. For the sake of anything you love, why don't you buy a Darwin fish or some type of catchy bumper sticker instead of putting some junk like that in the parking lot of a university? How embarrassing.

I don't concur. You say yourself it's in the parking lot of a university. I would see this and think this car belongs to an atheist who is happy and frugal, spending money on their life, fun and education, not professional bumper decals.

I would also think this is someone who is sick of the assumption that anyone happy must have "found gawd" or conversely that you can't be happy if you haven't.

I don't think it's embarrassing at all. It's frugal. They are recycling a box. It's not tiny print that you have to rear-end someone to read, like a lot of bumper stickers. If they say they are happy, why say they are not happy?

OR, you're perfectly happy and sick of people implying that you're not just because you haven't "found Gawd"...

Now, if you equate being frustrated with a misconception and being generally unhappy, I guess you got me; however, if you think of general happiness as something that can exist for a person even while said person is frustrated with other people's misconceptions, then your argument doesn't hold water.

Bottom line to me is: Really? Who are you to judge whether someone is happy or not based on them claiming that they ARE? That's right up there with saying that anyone who has an atheist (or christian, or jewish, or pastafarian, or whatever) bumper sticker of any kind couldn't possibly actually be that thing because after all "if you're so desperate to say that" then "typically you are trying to hard and in reality, are not" atheist (or christian, or jewish, or pastafarian, or whatever).

Seriously. What's wrong with taking it at face value that the person is atheist and happy (and happened to want to say so with a home-made sign instead of shelling out money for a mass-market bumper sticker)?